A computer does not think, it feels nothing, and what it is said to "know"--bits of information all cast in the digital mode--has ...no fringe. Nor has it a memory, only storage room. On any point called for, the answer is all or none. Vagueness, intelligent confusion, original punning on words or ideas never occur, the internal hookups being unchangeable; they were determined once for all by the true minds that made the machine and program. When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity; the greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the he...avenly host crying "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"What," it will be questioned, "When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?" O no, no, I see a...n innumerable company of the heavenly host crying "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... so long as woman sat with bandaged eyes and manacled hands, fast bound in the clamps of ignorance and inaction, the world of t...hought moved in its orbit like the revolutions of the moon; with one face (the man's face) always out, so that the spectator could not distinguish whether it was disc or sphere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the quilts I had found good objects--hospitable, warm, with soft edges yet resistant, with boundaries yet suggesting a continuo...us safe expanse, a field that could be bundled, a bundle that could be unfurled, portable equipment, light, washable, long-lasting, colorful, versatile, functional and ornamental, private and universal, mine and thine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man... can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive;" or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture--in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in t...he memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Darwin was, like Copernicus, a one-idea man. Each had his "nuclear inspiration" early in life, and spent the rest of his life work...ing it out--the ratio of inspiration to perspiration being heavily in favor of the second. Both lacked the many-sidedness, that universality of interest and amazing multitude of achievement in unrelated fields of research which characterised Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, and hundreds of lesser but equally versatile geniuses. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Darwin and Copernicus, after the decisive turning point when their course was set, led a life of duty, devotion to task, rigorous self-discipline, and spiritual desiccation. It looks as if the artesian wells of their inspiration had been replaced by a mechanical water supply kept under pressure by sheer power of will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »